The Wasteland
by ElisabethDarling
Summary: And of course she doesn't know about his wandering or his loneliness, but why would that matter? He wandered in beauty, he was alone in radiance. She was born into the fermenting waters of her parent's addiction, she'd never been pure, not like this place.


"It's a barren wasteland," He said. There was only one window in her tiny room, but it was tall and the Gothic arch reminded her of a church. She had asked if it was always like this outside, the endless breeze of wind and the constant spinning of grey sand in the air.

Ulquiorra had walked in on her starring dismally out into the cold wispy dunes. She hadn't been in Hueco Mundo long…at least she didn't think so. She couldn't tell time properly because of the constant moon, but it couldn't have been more than a few days because her hair hadn't grown and her nails were still trimmed and filed from before she was taken. Or maybe she had spent weeks untouched by this alien time.

Whether it had been forever or just a day didn't really matter because there was nothing else for Orihime to do but sitting and waiting. She was afraid to go outside of her room for two reasons: the first being she could get lost in the castle full of hostile enemies, and the second being that the door could be locked and her world would be suddenly and permanently reduced to the 10X10 square feet of the white space. She didn't want to face either possibility.

She recalled she once read an article about the quietest room in the world where the longest anyone had ever spent inside was thirty minutes. The man who accomplished this said that in the total uncompromised quiet he could hear the blood rushing through his own veins and the wet squelch of his systoles. Orihime had never been one to dislike solitude, she'd live on her own for years now, but she had no idea how cutting isolation was before this place, and how unnerving it was to think of the blood in her veins as the lullaby she relied on to help her sleep.

Whenever Ulquiorra came into her room she braced herself to be berated, belittled, and threatened. Sometimes, if she did her best to gently guide his one tracked mind, she could get him to say other things.

She asked him once how old the castle was and he told her it was older than the bones of her greatest ancestor. Orihime commented upon the bland nature of the color scheme and Ulquiorra said a comment like that coming from a creature with such an obscene hair color was ridiculous. One time she told him that she wanted to go home. He told her that this was her home now. His eyes were green and terrible like a rotting tree.

She cherished these moments. Not because she was a masochist, but because the relentless silence was dispelled for a few minutes. It was a relief to hear anything other than the tender connective tissue between her joints crack and pull like rubber.

But this time was different. She wasn't expecting him this early, not that she ever found a way to measure time but she felt like her body had adapted to knowing the daily arrival of sounds. So when he walked in, he saw her in a way she was not prepared to have herself be seen.

Her face was drunk with the enchanting lure of heartache and sorrow, her hands clasped in hopeful pleading with a god she isn't sure truly exists and looking boldly into the dark abyss of the horizon as if she could will her savior into existence.

Her heart skipped a beat as his footsteps approached and she braced for what she knew he would say: "He is not coming." _Please, please don't say anything. Don't say anything._ Her inner mantra chanted.

As he walked up beside Orihime, her mind raced to think of anything to keep him from tearing her hopes into pieces.

"Is it always like this?" She asked looking deliberately towards the landscape drenched in the milk light of the moon. He thought she meant barren, desolate, sparse, and lifeless. She didn't.

Orihime was spellbound by the way the moonlight filtered through the iridescent sand casting a kaleidoscope of translucent rainbows onto ground. It looked like powdery stardust, full of pearl drops and diamonds. The sky was black at its darkest and indigo at its lightest and the infinite array of nebulas and distant planets created pools of cerulean and purple. She could hardly fathom this moon, silver and unfamiliar, but it awakened a painful fluttering in her ribcage.

"It's a barren wasteland." He supplies her and she scowls without thinking. She didn't know how long he'd been alive but she knew he'd never lived anywhere but here.

"You've never seen a wasteland." She countered softly. She noticed him bristle beside her, and look down at her thoughtfully (as thoughtful as he could must with dim eyes and a blank expression.).

"And you have, woman?" He asked in his harsh manner, the way he spoke before he tore her apart verbally.

Orihime peered up at him through thick fantail lashes, and Ulquiorra was shocked to see contempt blossoming for the first time in her warm brown irises.

Orihime thought of her mother for the first time since being in Las Noches. It's not as if she never thinks of her, but it isn't often and it is never pleasant. Orihime remembers her mother as gaunt but beautiful with ruined veins and bruised arms. She slept with her mom on a rotting mattress in the middle of a one bedroom apartment that smelled of sweat and smoke.

Her mother conducted her business in the one bedroom while Orihime sat beside the passed out body of her father, waiting for her to come back out. Orihime remembered running to her once right after a man slammed their apartment door, throwing a wad of cash onto the floor as he left, and settling her head into the crook of her mother's neck. "I missed you, mama," She said sweetly. Orihime didn't understand why her mother burst into tears, sobbing apologies into the bob of her red hair as she rocked her back and forth; or why her father angrily told her mother to shut up as he threatened to give her something to cry about.

The alley behind their building was alive with screaming at night—begging and demanding, crying and laughing, the breaking of bottles and bones. Their home was full of burnt spoons and used needles, fast food bags and crushed cans. The carpets were stained brown, red, and yellow with mysterious bodily fluids. There was a broken T.V and a couple of colorful baby books no one except her brother bothered reading to her. She made a doll once, out of a dirty towel stuffed with paper napkins, she called him ghost.

Her brother spent most of his time at school or working to save up enough money (in a place their junkie parents couldn't find) so he and Orihime could get out of their messy hellish lives. And he eventually did but she will always remember the broken side of town they come from, and the forgotten people she was born to, and the degenerate thieves and rapists that made her mother moan.

"I know wastelands." She said with conviction that she herself found surprising. This place, Hueco Mundo, was empty and silent, still it was pristine. "You've only known this." _You've only known beauty,_ she wanted to say.

And of course she doesn't know about his wandering or his loneliness, but why would that matter? He wandered in beauty, he was alone in radiance. She was born into the fermenting waters of her parent's addiction, she'd never been pure, not like this place.


End file.
